Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (13 page)

“Certainly.” Fife lifted his phone and spoke in it.

In a moment the door opened and Sergeant Bruce entered. She came in three steps, getting the three of us at a glance, stopped with her heels together, and snapped a salute. She appeared to be quite herself, only extremely solemn. She advanced when she was told to.

“This is Nero Wolfe,” Fife said. “He’ll ask you some questions, and you’ll answer as from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sit down,” Wolfe told her. “Archie, if you’ll move that chair around? Excuse me, General, if I violate regulations, a major waiting on a sergeant, but I find it impossible to regard a woman as a soldier and don’t intend to try.” He looked at her. “Miss Bruce. That’s your name?”

“Yes, sir. Dorothy Bruce.”

“You were at lunch when that thing exploded?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was as clear and composed as it had been when she told me she was in my eye.

“Is that your usual lunch hour? Four o’clock?”

“No, sir. Shall I explain?”

“Please. With a minimum of
sirs
. I am not a field marshal in disguise. Go ahead.”

“Yes, sir. I beg your pardon, that was automatic. I have no usual lunch hour. At Colonel Ryder’s request, I mean his order, I have been going to lunch whenever he did, so I would be on duty when he was in his office. Today he didn’t go to lunch—that is, I don’t think he did—at least he didn’t come out through the anteroom and let me know he was going, as he always had done. When he called me in at a quarter to four to give me some instructions, he asked if I had had lunch and said he had forgotten about it, and told me to go then. I went down to the corner drugstore and had a sandwich and coffee. I got back at twenty past four.”

Wolfe’s half-closed eyes never left her face. “The corner drugstore?” he inquired mildly. “Didn’t you hear the explosion or see any excitement?”

“No, sir. The drugstore is a block and a half away, around on Mitchell Street.”

“You say Colonel Ryder didn’t go to lunch? Was he
constantly in his office right through to a quarter to four?”

“I think I qualified that. I said he didn’t come out through the anteroom. Of course he could have left by the other door at any time, the one direct from his room to the outer hall, and re-entered the same way. He often used that door.”

“Was that door kept locked?”

“Usually it was, yes, sir.” She hesitated. “Should I confine myself to the question?”

“We want information, Miss Bruce. If you have it we want it.”

“Only about that door. Colonel Ryder had a key to it, of course. But on two occasions I saw him, going out that way, intending to return soon, push the button that released the lock so that he could get back in without using the key. If you want details like that—”

“We do. Have you got some more?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I only mentioned that because you asked if that door was kept locked.”

“Have you any idea how this thing happened?”

“Why—” Her eyes flickered. “I thought—I understand it was a grenade Colonel Ryder had in his desk.”

Fife shot at her, “How do you know it was a grenade?”

Her head pivoted to him. “Because, sir, everyone is saying that it was. If it was a secret—it isn’t now.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Wolfe said peevishly. “If you please, General. Have you any idea, Miss Bruce, how the grenade got exploded?”

“Certainly not! I mean—no, sir.”

“It is permissible to mean certainly not,” Wolfe murmured at her. “You know nothing whatever about it?”

“No, sir.”

“What were the instructions Colonel Ryder gave you at a quarter to four when he called you in?”

“Only routine matters. He said he was leaving for the day, and told me to sign the letters, and that he wouldn’t be in tomorrow and I should cancel any appointments he had.”

“That was all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were his confidential secretary?”

“Well—I don’t know how confidential I was. I have been here less than two weeks and had never met Colonel Ryder before. I suppose, really, for that sort of job, I was still on trial. I only came up from Washington ten days ago.”

“What had you been doing in Washington?”

“I was secretary to one of General Carpenter’s assistants. Lieutenant Colonel Adams.”

Wolfe grunted, and closed his eyes. Sergeant Bruce sat and waited. Fife had his lips pressed into a straighter line than usual, apparently restraining himself. He wasn’t accustomed to playing audience while someone else asked questions, but probably hadn’t forgotten the time Wolfe had made him look silly in front of three lieutenants and a private who had been tailing a distinguished visitor from Mexico. Wolfe grunted again, this time what I called his number-three grunt, which meant he was displeased, and I had no idea what had riled him. I thought Sergeant Bruce had been courteous, co-operative, and cute. Then he opened his eyes, shifted his center of gravity, and got his hands braced on the chair arms, and of course that explained it. He was displeased because he had decided he was going to stand up.

He did so, rumbling, “That’s all for the present, Miss Bruce. You’ll be available, of course. As you know,
General, I promised Mr. Cramer I’d take a look at the ruins. Come, Archie.” He took a step. But Fife stopped him:

“Just a minute, please. All right, Bruce, you may go.”

She arose, hesitated a moment, then faced the general. “May I ask you something, sir?”

“Yes. What?”

“They won’t let me take anything from my room, sir. I have some things—just personal belongings—I was away over the week-end and came direct to the office from the station this morning. Colonel Ryder gave me a passout—but I suppose it isn’t valid—now.”

“All right, go ahead.” Fife sounded fed up. “I’ll send instructions to Colonel Tinkham—By the way—” He squinted at her. “You have no office and no job. Temporarily. You sound intelligent and capable. Are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The devil you are. We’ll see. Report in my anteroom tomorrow morning. If you have favorite tools, bring them with you. You’d better get them out of there now, that place will be cleaned up tonight. Tell Colonel Tinkham—no, I’ll tell him. You may go.”

She saluted, whirled, and went out like a soldier.

Fife waited until the door had closed behind her before he spoke to Wolfe. “You were saying something. Before we had Bruce come in.”

“Nothing of importance.” Wolfe was curt, as always when he talked standing up. “Accident, no. Suicide, possibly. Murder? It appears that anyone might have entered that room when Ryder wasn’t there, without being observed, since Ryder might have gone out by the hall door and left it unlocked.”

“Entered? And then what?”

“Oh, as his fancy struck him. Got the grenade from
the desk. Took it away. Later, when Miss Bruce left, entered the anteroom, opened the door there into Ryder’s room, pulled the pin from the grenade, tossed it at Ryder, and pumped back into the hall. That, of course, raises the interesting point that presumably only six people knew the grenade was there: Tinkham, Lawson, Shattuck, you, Goodwin, me. I know of nothing that eliminates anyone but the last two. Take you, for instance. You’ve been here all afternoon?”

Fife’s lips tightened in a grim smile. “That’s a good plan; start at the top. Yes, I’ve been here, but I’m afraid I can’t prove I haven’t left this room. Shattuck came back with me after lunch, but he left around two-thirty. Then I dictated for half an hour, but after that I guess you have me.”

Wolfe grunted. “Bah! This is nothing but gibberish, as it stands now. I’ll run down and take a look.”

He stalked out and I followed. As I was pulling the front door to, softly since it was a general’s door, I heard Fife at his phone asking for Colonel Tinkham.

There was delay down on the tenth floor, at the scene. In what had been the doorway to Colonel Ryder’s room from the hall stood a corporal with accouterments. The fact that he would have weighed over 200 even without the accouterments made it seem all the more formidable when he said no one could enter, including us. When Wolfe told me to go and get Fife and haul him down there, I stalled; and, as I expected, in a minute Colonel Tinkham arrived to tell the corporal it was okay, orders from General Fife. Then Tinkham joined our party by preceding us into the shambles. Wolfe asked him if anything had been taken out, and Tinkham said no, the police had given it a good going over but hadn’t been permitted to remove anything, and neither had anyone else.

It was still broad daylight in that corner room, with a nice breeze from the windows, since there was no glass left in them. As we looked things over, stepping to avoid chunks of plaster and similar obstructions, various details were worthy of note. By a freak of the blast, the partition to the hall was a wreck, but the one to the anteroom only had a couple of cracks. The door to the anteroom was standing open, and looked intact but a little cockeyed. Two of the chairs were nothing but splinters, four were battered and scarred, and Ryder’s own chair, against the wall back of his desk, didn’t have a mark. The desk top was smashed and pockmarked, as if someone had first dropped a two-ton weight on it and then used it for a target with a shotgun loaded with slugs. On it and all around that area were bloodstains, from single drops up to a big blob the size of a dishpan on the floor back of the desk. The remains of the suitcase and its contents, also on the floor, were over near the door to the anteroom, the contents strewn around, the suitcase twisted and riddled so that for a second I didn’t recognize it. Everywhere, in all directions, were little pieces of metal, as small as the head of a pin or as big as a thumbnail, black on one side and pink on the other. Anyone anywhere in that room when the thing exploded would have stopped at least a dozen of them—and they would have stopped him. I dropped a couple in my pocket to add to my collection in a drawer at home.

I also acquired another souvenir. A piece of folded paper in the jumble of the contents of the suitcase looked familiar. Wolfe and Tinkham were at the other side of the room. I stooped and snared the paper, saw at a glance that it was the anonymous letter to Shattuck that had started the morning’s conference, and slipped it into my inside breast pocket.

We were still poking around, observing and commenting,
and Tinkham was still acting as chaperon, when I became aware that company had arrived next door. I stepped through to the anteroom. Sergeant Bruce was standing there, frowning at a tennis racket she held in her hand.

“Damaged?” I inquired brightly.

“No, sir.”

Nuts
, I thought,
this sir stuff is worse than a suit of armor
. She put the racket into a fiber shipping carton that stood on the floor with its end flaps open, and moved around behind her desk. The place was thick with dust, and things were displaced, but nothing seemed to be hurt much.

“Can I help?”

“No, sir, thanks.”

Some day
, I said to myself grimly, or rather to her but not audibly,
matters will be so arranged that, whether you’re worth it or not
, sir
will be as far from your mind as
—

“Archie!” It was a bellow.

“At ease,” I told her gruffly, and faded.

Wolfe and Tinkham were at the other end of the room, over by the corporal.

“Take me home,” Wolfe said.

There was never any dillydallying when Wolfe had decided to go home. The look on Tinkham’s face gave me the impression that he either had some questions he would like to ask, or that he had got no answers to some he had already asked, but all he did get was a request from Wolfe to inform General Fife that he would communicate with him in the morning.

There was a crowd down on the sidewalk, and a bigger one across the street. Any broken glass that had descended from the tenth floor two hours ago had been cleaned up. As we made our way through to where the
car was parked, I heard a man tell a girl, “A big bomb exploded and killed eighty people and two generals.” That was a little surprising, but driving home, going up Varick Street, Wolfe said something that was much more so. From the back seat he told me plainly, “Go a little faster, Archie.” That flammed me. As I said, he never talked while undergoing the hazards of motorized movement, and him asking for more speed was about the same as a private asking for more K.P. Anyhow, I obliged.

He muttered under his breath, probably a prayer of thanks, as we stopped in front of the house, and then, as I opened my door and started to wriggle from behind the wheel, he spoke. “Don’t get out. You’re going somewhere.”

“Oh. I am.”

“Yes. Back downtown. General Fife said that place will be cleaned up tonight. They may start at any moment, and I want that suitcase. Get it and bring it here. Just the case. I don’t want the contents. Exactly as it is; don’t bend it or do any tampering with it.”

I had twisted around to glare at him. He had opened his door and was climbing out. “You mean,” I demanded, “Ryder’s suitcase?”

“I do.” He was on the sidewalk. “It’s important. Also it is doubly important that no one should see you taking it. Especially Lieutenant Lawson, Colonel Tinkham, General Fife, or Miss Bruce, but preferably no one.”

I seldom sputter, but I sputtered. “That suitcase—from under their noses—listen. Will you settle for the moon? Glad to get the moon for you. Do you realize—”

“Certainly I realize. It’s a difficult errand. I doubt if there is another man anywhere, in the Army or out, who could safely be entrusted with it.”

He sure wanted that suitcase, to be ladling it out like that.

“Bushwah,” I said, and opened my door and crawled out, and headed for the stoop.

He snapped after me. “Where are you going?”

“To get a receptacle!” I called over my shoulder. “Do you think I’m going to hang it around my neck?”

Three minutes later I was on my way back to Duncan Street, the rear seat occupied not by Wolfe but by a man-size suitcase that I had got from the closet in his room. I had one of my own just as big, but I wasn’t going to risk my personal property in addition to my career as a warrior. I was sorry I hadn’t read up more fully on the regulations about courts-martial. Not that I wasted the minutes en route being sorry. I used them to consider ways and means. My watch said 6:30, and at that hour of the day I couldn’t tell what I would be up against until I had executed a patrol. You never knew around there; anyone might be out or in; anyone might leave for the day any time between four and midnight. I had my mind started on about three and a half different plans, but by the time I got to Duncan Street I had decided that I couldn’t lay out a campaign until I had looked the ground over and done a reconnaissance on the enemy.